Photometric mode identification methods of nonradial pulsations in eclipsing binaries I. – Dynamic Eclipse Mapping

We present the Dynamic Eclipse Mapping method designed specifically to reconstruct the surface intensity patterns of non-radial stellar oscillations on components of eclips-ing binaries. The method needs a geometric model of the binary, accepts the light curve and the detected pulsation frequencies on input, and on output yields estimates of the pulsation patterns, in form of images – thus allowing a direct identification of the surface mode numbers (`,m). Since it has minimal modelling requirements and can operate on photometric observations in arbitrary wavelength bands, Dynamic Eclipse Mapping is well suited to analyze the wide-band time series collected by space obser-vatories. We have investigated the performance and the limitations of the method through extensive numerical tests on simulated data, in which almost all photometrically de-tectable modes with a latitudinal complexity ` − |m | 6 4 were properly restored. The method is able by its nature to simultaneously reconstruct multimode pulsations from data covering a sufficient number of eclipses, as well as pulsations on components wit